


colorblind

by thedevilbites



Category: Seinfeld
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Elaine has serious anger issues and refuses to admit it, F/M, Just general soup things, Love/Hate, Sexual Tension, Soup Nazi is crazy, breaking in the ship!, c'mon people you can't deny the attraction, features egg shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24445309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilbites/pseuds/thedevilbites
Summary: “No, I’m not going toapologize,”she tells the door stiffly, “I mean, who does he think I am?Mother Teresa,or something?”The door, to her credit, chooses not to comment.
Relationships: Elaine Benes/Soup Nazi | Yev Kassem
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	colorblind

**Author's Note:**

> character study delving into elaine's problems because i feel like she has a lot of them and the show refuses to acknowledge her anger issues for some preposterous reason unbeknownst to mankind 
> 
> also soup nazi/elaine is an ultimate yum for my tum and should be recognized 
> 
> also also -- am i breaking in the ship here??

She’s angry. 

She’s _fuming_ ; volatile and pissed off and bristling and exhausted and apoplectic and — _red_ , all she sees is _red red red_ — she’s spinning and spewing and roiling and churning, something hot and heavy and thick sliding down her throat, slamming into the pit of her stomach like one of those glistening metal paperweights you find sneering at you from the corner of a senator’s desk and she just wants to rip and kick and tear and destroy, no, _annihilate_ , his whole fucking kitchen with his stupid metal shelves — she swears he has them _waxed_ just to fuck with her — that gleam so bright she thinks they’ll blind her and then there’s _ugh_ his disgustingly starch-white uniform and his stupid rows and rows and rows of mulligatawny and clam bisque and jambalaya and whateverthefuckelse people are craving and raving and drooling over like sick twisted puppies. She’s just so angry, so so so unbelievably angry and, and —

And.

Sometimes she doesn’t think people _get it_ — rage — because it’s not just a normal _anger_ or a half-fueled _hatred_ or a bland, offhand comment where people overuse all the right words for all the wrong reasons. 

It’s a mindset it’s an addiction it’s a _disease._

Because when Elaine says she’s mad, she’s _mad_ , and god help whoever is on the receiving end of her wrath because she will wrap around them like an anaconda — scales shredding paper-thin layers of skin into gummy red mulch — and she’ll squeeze the life out of them, look deep into their eyes as they take their last breath and _laugh_. 

She’s the _anaconda_. The Soup Nazi is _next._

___

(But it’s also different, somehow. 

Different in ways that she doesn’t want to admit, _can’t_ admit, at least not yet, and underneath all that anger and hate and rage bubbling out like thick sludgy pus from an infected pimple, all red and crusty and throbbing around the edges, there’s—

a slithering stirring fluttering in her throat in her lungs in the pit of stomach, slipping lower lower lower

—curiosity.

 _She’s just so angry, so so so unbelievably angry and, and_ —

 _And_ she wants wants wants wants

to unwind and unravel and untangle the strings of his order and neatness and rules, god, so so many rules, that he wraps around himself like an honest to god security blanket. Wants to ask _why_ and _how_ and _what happened_ in his life, who _built him up_ just to _tear him down_ that made him closed-off and guarded and angry and just plain mean, barking and hissing and baring his teeth at everyone who goes against his dictatorship as if he’s the living embodiment of some sort of bitter lemon candy that sticks to the tips of your teeth in jagged little pieces.

She could ask him, if she wanted to. 

She could worm her way into his mind, clamp on his body like some sort of blood-thirsty leech or a tapeworm or that disgusting yellow fungus they were playing a documentary on last night that she can’t for the life of her remember the name of and _force_ her way into his very bloodstream and make him tell her what’s wrong; they could play therapist and broken patient, and she could _fix_ him, she could be kind and attentive and actually _listen_ to what he has to say, she could be empathetic or sympathetic or whatever he needed her to be at that very moment in time because, if she’s being honest with herself, New York was a retched, murderous place and the world was a cruel enough place without one more person bringing somebody down onto the crap-infested sidewalk with them after they’ve just managed to work their way up. She could do all that. She could. But. But but but—

But she’s learned that if someone shoves you, you shove back _harder._

But there’s no way out except _through._

But there’s always—

_the anger._

The anger that fuels and energizes and revitalizes and strengthens her soul, gives life to her muscles and organs and her very bone marrow and that boiling spitting screaming anger is what’s _here_ and _now_ and _right in front of her_ so she really can’t be faulted for paying attention to all that other emotional crap, can she?

But but but—

But she has all the right questions at all the wrong times.)

___

She’s blistering. She’s angry. She’s hurt.

So she leaves his kitchen with a handful of yellowing notebook paper crushed between her fingers and a smile so wide it cuts her face in two and she dangles they key to his empire right in front of his face with glazed eyes and _snaps her teeth in his face_ like she’s some kind of rabid dog and _dares_ him to stop her, dares him to _try._

She’s going to sell his recipes, hell, she’ll give them away for free if that’s what it takes to topple it all down—topple _him_ down—and she won’t look back and she won’t shed a tear and she won’t even hesitate because—

Because he _deserves_ it — _they all_ deserve it — and if she’s going to Hell then she’ll shake hands with the Devil, but not before she burns his whole empire to the ground. 

So she leaves the Soup Nazi’s kitchen. 

And she doesn’t look back she doesn’t look back she doesn’t look back, except—

Except there were those three seconds. Three measly insignificant unreliable _indeterminate_ seconds where she shifts her head ever so slightly, a jungle of slick perfectly-primped curls and thick, heavy mascara and matte #32 smoked rose lipstick that the cashier at the mall assured her just splendidly complimented her facial tone and she looks back, she looks—

_One._

She catches his eyes,

(confused, brows drawn up together, creases along his forehead like sharp rivulets in a rushing river, and why does he look so, so...)

glances up at him from under her lashes and—

_Two._

She feels something stir and yawn and stretch and awaken _somewhere_ inside of her—

_Three._

Her eyes skate down to his lips.

She looks. She _lingers._

___

 _Loud_ has always worked for Elaine. 

She likes the chaos and the madness and the infuriating teeth-grinding annoyance that licks up her spine and makes her want to rip her hair out of her scalp. And if that’s a little fucked up, well, who can blame her? We all have our kinks, vices, addictions and _loud irritating infuriating_ just makes her want to shove and tease and giggle and _moan_ into the darkness of a bedroom with a long hard line of muscle pressed above her and suddenly there’s not a sound in the whole wide world except for the obscene slap of skin against skin and the rustling of sweat-soaked cotton bed sheets as limbs get so tangled together she can’t tell her body from the one above her. 

The point is, that Elaine has a _type_. Whether that type may or may not be _infuriating_ , well, she really can’t say, can she?

With Puddy is was his grating raspy voice, his truly atrocious choice in coats, his stupid face paint, his exacerbating high-fives. With other guys it’s batting for the wrong team, and with other other guys it’s their infuriating penchant for correcting her grammar because, _I’m sorry_ she’s an uncultured American and _he’s_ a proper, high-society Englishman who says “pardon” instead of a supposedly-snarky “what.”

What doesn’t work for Elaine are domineering, borderline clinically _insane_ men who march around a kitchen all day trying to bend the universe around themselves and come up with insane rules for ordering a fucking cup of soup.

So. There’s that.

___

She ends up publishing the recipes in _The New York Observer._

She had to throw Peterman’s name around a couple times to push back the week's headlines to the fifth page, and, sure enough, the Volume 15, Number 11 issue comes out the week of December fourteenth with her story plastered on the front page. 

The Soup Nazi’s recipies are _out._

Word spreads quickly, very _very_ quickly, and five hours since the newspaper’s release date the city is buzzing and humming and _throbbing_ with dinner party invitations and honest to god cheers; people buying crock pots and sparkling brand-new stoves just off the market and the air is charged sizzling electric _alive_ with creamy split pea and chunky turkey chili, simmering black bean, rich chicken broccoli, thick french onion and swirling spiced tomato rice, light and airy mushroom barley and the restaurant has a CLOSING: EVERYTHING MUST GO sign hanging from its door two hours later. 

Elaine looks at the newspaper, at the rushing thrumming _people,_ at Jerry and Kramer and George and Newman and how they skitter about the apartment like a colony of hyper-active ants looking for pots and bowls and mugs and even _measuring cups_ to frantically fill before the restaurant closes for good, and she _laughs_ until her throat is raw and her stomach is sore and her eyes are raw and puffy from joyful _glistening_ tears and her mouth aches as if it’s going to rip like cheap fabric at the corners from her _too wide too happy too loud grin._

___

That night she climbs into the shower, cranks the nozzle towards HOT, and scrubs her skin until she _bleeds._

After ten minutes she’s _trembling,_ and her body just sort of gives up so she sinks to the floor and lays down on the smooth, cream-rust tiles because her skin is red and puffy and _raw_ and the water is blistering burning _painful_ , and it _hurts too much_ and she swears she has one of those out-of-body experiences you only hear about from coming-of-age movies or from a really bad acid trip and she can see herself on the shower floor, arms and legs sprawled awkwardly like wet noodles in a glistening red puddle—it’s so _thick_ , she didn’t know her blood was so _thick_ —eyes staring at the ceiling, through the ceiling, and there’s steam and sweat and heat and pain and something sour bitter acidic at the back of her throat and swallowing it down feels like forcing a lump of hot coal through her windpipe and she’s coughing choking spasming with everything and nothing and anything all at once, but it isn’t regret, _never_ regret regret regret regret rage rage rage rage, no, wait, regret—

But even then she doesn’t get out of the shower, and she doesn’t adjust the temperature.

___

A week later, she hears from Jerry who heard from Kramer who heard from Newman who heard from one of his “highly-illusive” conspiracy-theorist mailmen meetings that the Soup Nazi was still in town.

Elaine almost chokes on a honeyed peach when Jerry tells her.

A mixture of spit and caramelized syrup dribbles down her chin. “He’s _what?”_

“Still in town,” Jerry calls over his shoulder, absently flapping a hand back at her and disappearing into the bedroom with what she thinks might be a vintage stack of records. Maybe a bunched-up coat? 

“How the _hell_ is he still in town,” she bleats, propping an elbow onto the kitchen counter top and drumming her fingers against the smooth marble once, twice, a third time, “I mean, Jerry, I _destroyed_ him.” 

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Jerry re-emerges from his room, voice tinged with something she can't quite make out, fiddling with the cuff of his shirt pocket, and says, “maybe you should go talk to him.”

“Talk to him?” She’s never heard of a more stupid suggestion.

“Well, apologize, or something. You ruined his whole business—“

Kramer chooses this moment to launch himself through the door and swan-dive over the couch.

Elaine yawns, “Jesus, Kramer,” and Jerry doesn’t even blink at his somewhat questionable entrance.

She watches, vaguely certain that they were just on the tip of something _important_ before Kramer came literally flying through the door, as Jerry strolls around to the front of the couch and puts his hands on his waist in what Elaine thinks is a quite marvelous impression of the Russian letter “ф.” God, she really has to stop doing those dumb ‘foreign’ crosswords with Mr. Peterman…

“...what are you doing? I just got these _professionally fluffed_ yesterday…” Jerry has started vehemently overturning all the cushions, sounding like he’s being held at gun-point.

Kramer’s head pops up from behind the couch as if nothing happened. “Professionally what?” 

“Oh, nothing, it’s just,” the cushion is thrown ruthlessly back onto the couch, “this _thing_ Sierra wanted me to...“

Right. Elaine suddenly gets the total unbidden, weirdly put-out feeling that she’s not meant to be here, as if she’s intruding on a moment that’s not her own.

She looks at Jerry, then back at Kramer, then at Jerry again. They seemed to have started arguing over the longevity of standard grade-A eggs versus...some odd fusion of standard grade-A and non-standard grade-B eggs that turn into standard grade-C eggs? Christ, she’s pretty sure that’s not even a thing...

Time for her to go, then. “See ya, suckers,” she rolls the words around in her mouth, her new Gucci purse, courtesy of the J.Peterman company card, swinging over her shoulder like a pendulum when she swipes it off the counter, and there’s something vaguely thick and sour in the back of her throat when she opens the door.

She looks back at Jerry, then at Kramer. Somehow what appears to be a startlingly large amount of egg yolk has ended up on the ceiling. 

They don’t say goodbye. They don’t even look at her. 

They don’t even _notice._

Her throat clamps up, and her abdomen grinds tighter like a screw. Maybe she’s coming down with something, the stomach-flu, or that Mad-cow disease that everyone on the news is talking about.

Elaine let’s the door slam shut behind her with a little more force than necessary. She stares back at the frail wood rattling on its hinges, forehead pinched into a frown.

“No, I’m not going to _apologize,”_ she tells the door stiffly, “I mean, who does he think I am? _Mother Teresa,_ or something?”

The door, to her credit, chooses not to comment.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed, lovelies!


End file.
